


Langoiran

by stifledlaughter



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bakery AU, Baking adventures, Cultural exchange, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 00:50:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6634372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stifledlaughter/pseuds/stifledlaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Bakery AU] Laurent doesn't buy any of the baked goods from Damen's shop- but Damen learns something from Laurent's childhood to possibly change that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Langoiran

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off of fahye's Bakery AU (which you can find here- http://archiveofourown.org/works/6165859/chapters/14127229).

By now he had gotten Laurent to stop by and occasionally have a latte, but those times weren’t as often as Damen would have liked.  He also never touched any of the baked goods, much to Damen’s chagrin, and to Nikandros’ annoyance.

“What, there aren’t enough layers in our croissants? The butter not pure enough? Weren’t baked at the exact degree he demands it?” muttered Nik as he pulled a steaming tray out of the oven, the wafting bread smells overtaking the kitchens and infusing the air with blissful warmth.

Damen didn’t think that was it. Sure, it seemed the Laurent was particular-  exacting, even – but something had to be a weakness of his. Some kind of food, something nostalgic maybe. But he knew that asking straight wouldn’t get him anywhere.

He just had to wait for a crack, a break in the shell, to figure out what it was.

The information came to him from an unlikely source- a poli-sci undergrad by the name of Nicaise who sometimes studied at the bakery. There wasn’t a ton of seating, but he took over one of the small tables, hewn out of rough wood but smoothed over on top to ensure a safe spot for steadily balanced mugs and plates. His books spilled out onto the little table, stacked like precarious shale stones, wobbling as he leaned and frowned at the tiny lines of words on poorly-copied articles.

Damen had seen him talk to Laurent a few times, and they seemed, if not necessarily “friendly”…. at ease with bitching at each other, frankly. He never could hear what they said, but they seemed to know each other well enough.

It wasn’t until a Tuesday morning, right after Laurent had left the shop with his latte, that Nicaise actually spoke to Damen for the first time.

“You’re wondering why he doesn’t actually get anything else, aren’t you?” commented the student as he efficiently highlighted a line of barely-readable text on an article he was reading.

Damen raised an eyebrow at him – but then decided to roll with it. “Yeah. Gluten intolerant? Or just picky?”

“Neither,” Nicaise replied, reaching up to scratch his russet, curly hair, and then picking up his highlighter again. “Well, true, he’s picky, but this city is full of bakeries that have exactly what you have. So I don’t think it’s a matter of quality, if that’s what you’re wondering. You just don’t have what he wants. He’s had better elsewhere.”

Damen frowned, slightly – _irrationally,_ he thought- and said, “Well, what does he actually want then?”

“He really can’t get it here.” Nicaise, who was clearly enjoying having a captive audience. “Sure, croissants and bagels are nice, but that’s not what'll make him stick around.”

Damen, getting a bit annoyed at this game, turned back to the counter and began rearranging the brioches aimlessly, trying to get his mind off of the puzzle that was Laurent.

A warm red glow cast over the bakery as the sun dipped to rest, and Damen had started to collect the leftover baked goods for the homeless shelter donations for the night when he heard Nicaise say something at the door he couldn’t quite catch.

“What?” asked Damen, setting the bag of shelter donations on the ground and turning to face the student.

Nicaise turned with a smirk on his face, slowly enunciating the word, as if he were talking to a child. “Langoiran.” And then he pushed the door open and left, his blue earring glinting in the last light of the setting sun.

“Langoiran…” muttered Damen, furrowing his brow. “What the hell is that?”

 ----------------------------------------

After some decidedly confused Google searching various spellings of what he heard, Damen stumbled upon the website of a small town in southern France near the city of Bordeaux, whose defining feature was a medieval castle. Curious what this had to do with Laurent, he clicked through the links, noting how the castle was apparently renovated in parts and open for tours, and had been owned by the de Veres for generations.

Clicking through, he saw a gallery of the renovated part of the castle that had housed the later generations of de Veres, with pictures. Feeling slightly suspicious of what he was going to see, he opened up the Summer 2005 folder in the gallery section.

It was clearly a sort of family album with the renovated castle as a backdrop- in nearly every photo was a tall boy clearly growing into his shoulders with a wide grin on a freckled face, and then a smaller boy, looking at the older boy with clear adoration in his eyes. _Brothers_ , mused Damen, and a pang flashed through him– _no, not going to think about him and what he did, stop it –_ and he forced himself to keep scrolling, peering closely at the boys to see their faces.

It was certain – the smaller boy was Laurent. The blue eyes were wider, the face rounder and more in open awe of everything, but it was definitely him. There were some photos of just Laurent, settled on a crumbling castle rampart hunched over a book, with a little plate of treats next to him, or peering up at the _donjon_ walls from inside, surrounded by woodworking equipment and excess planking from renovations. Sometimes he would be in the background of a picture of the brother who was dressed in full football gear or some other kind of sport jersey. Mostly, though, he would be photographed ( _by his mother? Father? The brother?_ mused Damen) sitting, alone or quietly next to his brother, reading various books. Including, Damen noticed with a smile, The Little Prince in the original French.

Damen sat back in his chair, feeling slightly creepy but not enough to put him off from his plan. After all, Nicaise told him about it, and while in retrospect that may have been just to piss Laurent off, he couldn’t help where got the information. He just had it, and what he could do with it could be the key to Laurent opening up a bit.

Because next to Laurent in nearly every picture where he was reading was a plate of baked goods, and while Damen couldn’t name them, he was going to learn.

\---------------------------------------------

The door chimed and Damen tried to contain his excitement, barely restraining himself as he quickly ducked into the back to grab the cloth-covered plate he had specially put aside so that no one would touch it, the freshly cooled treats inside at the perfect moment to be eaten. After a few seconds of trying to keep his cool and utterly failing, Damen gave up and went to the front anyway as Laurent began to sip his latte handed to him by a mildly annoyed Nikandros. (Long gone was the assumed, pained smile of the customer service slave, and a mutual understanding that neither were going to be close friends had sprung up between them with no negative consequences.)

“Hey, Laurent, can you try these? I was thinking of adding them to the baking rotation here.” A rather weak opening, he knew, but it was a lot less embarrassing than the other unfortunate openings he had mused on.

Laurent paused. “I never eat any of the baked goods here. I’m not sure why you would pick me as a test subject for whatever’s under that handtowel.”

Damen slid the plate across the top of the baked goods display counter. “Just try one.”

Laurent raised an eyebrow, set down his latte, and pulled the cloth off of the plate, and his blue eyes ( _like sapphires_ thought Damen in a flash of hyper-romanticism, as he was prone to) widened.

“How- how did you- these-“ asked Laurent, taken off guard for possibly the first time since Damen met him. “How did you know?”

_Canelé bordelais_ , or Caneles de Bordeaux, are small little cakes with a heavy vanilla and rum flavored center. The outside, which is the key to the softness of the inside, is like a _crème brûlée_ top, is meant to be sugary and cracked. They are particular to the Bordeaux region of France, and Damen knew that Laurent would be unlikely to find them here in Australia, which gave him the idea for making the little cakes.

They certainly weren’t easy to make – the preparation was nearly two days long, with a day for mixing and then a cooling period from 24 hours, and then the baking. But Damen was not a baker because he disliked a culinary challenge – after all, if he got the hang of making these, he could easily add them to the roster of baked goods, perhaps as a seasonal winter item, or Valentine’s Day special.

Finding the baking mould was the hardest part – the caneles were particularly shaped. Thus, he had poked around in the absolute mounds of baking supplies he had inherited from his mother’s baking stash. She had been well-traveled and had bought a small mold of twelve caneles at some point, now buried in the boxes of cooking supplies. After a thorough scrubbing and treating, it was good to go.

But hopefully it would all be worth it, and with that thought, Damen prepared them and waiting for Laurent to come into the bakery.

\-------------------------------------------------------------

Laurent was still staring at the caneles with a far-away expression, momentarily stunned.

“Nicaise gave me a hint. I kind of ran with it,” said Damen. _Oh no,_ he realized, _I had been so concerned about coming off as creepy I totally forgot if he would actually like the taste of them and if they’d taste like home- fuck, fuck -_

Laurent picked one up and bit off a piece, his teeth sinking into the soft, chewy confection. Damen waited, restraining his want to know if it was right, if it tasted like what Laurent remembered, maybe, maybe-

As Laurent finished the canale and delicately wiped his lips on the handtowel, Damen tried not to lose it.

A smile beginning to form on Laurent’s lips, and Damen resisted the strong urge to punch the air, despite he had no idea what Laurent said. He didn’t spit it out or have a snappy remark- he- oh my god-  he was _taking another. This was not a drill_.

“So? How is it?” Damen managed to say, unsure of whether to watch Laurent’s long fingers, or his lips, or his eyes that occasionally flicked back and forth between Damen and the caneles.

Laurent finished the one in his hands, and, with a rare smile, said “ _C’est passable”._

 

**Author's Note:**

> I actually visited the castle at Langoiran (I live in the Bordeaux area). Photos of the visit are here (http://melissaabroad.tumblr.com/post/142122804661/ch%C3%A2teau-de-langoiran-in-langoiran-france-this-was), if you want reference images. I totally made up the family-gallery website thing, but there was a family there who ran the tours and lived in the renovated part of the castle! I saw a small child running around and was envious that she got to grow up in a literal castle.  
> Thanks to queenoftheoctopuses on tumblr for helping me out with ideas for the fic and fixing my French at the end! (Spoiler- it's the French version of "adequate".) I used the English version of the word caneles to avoid French-English confusion in the fic.


End file.
